Ghosts
by orbythesea
Summary: He can't keep doing this. He can't keep living with her ghost. W/A, set in 5x05 through 5x11. Sequel to "After," part 4/5 of "Rule Nor Reason."


Predictably, Will ends the night at a bar.

He didn't mean to, but his condo is filled with ghosts and he can't stay in the office for another moment. He is too wired to sleep, anyway, too wired to work, to wired to stop for a moment and _feel_.

He finds a place where he's never been, where he's pretty sure _she's_ never been, where there's no memory to haunt him. He orders Booker's, neat, and before he can pull out his wallet, the blonde two barstools over is paying for his drink. "You look like you could use a friend," she says.

"I— " he shakes his head. "Look, just so we're clear, I don't pay for 'friendship,'" he says. "Personal policy." He drains his glass in a single gulp and it's good and it burns in the way that only cask strength bourbon can.

"And I don't sell it," the blonde says, unfazed.

If things were different, if his mood was different, God, if it was last week, Will would feel at least a little bit bad about the assumption, but he's so far beyond caring that he doesn't feel much of anything at all. "My mistake," he says with a shrug. He waves the bartender down and orders another glass. "And whatever she's having," he adds as an afterthought. He's not sure why, but he thinks it has something to do with not wanting to be indebted to her, not wanting to accept anything from anyone.

"I thought you didn't pay for friendship," the blonde says.

"Who says I want to be friends?" he shoots back, grinning.

She laughs and slides onto the stool next to his. "I'm Isabel," she says.

Will can't help but smile, a bit. "Well, it's a pleasure to meet you, Isabel." He waits for her to ask for _his_ name, to tell him that he was supposed to introduce himself as well, but she doesn't.

Instead, she clinks her glass against his and takes a sip. "It is, isn't it?"

He laughs and, in that moment, he decides to sleep with her. He still kind of thinks that she might be a hooker, but she seems to be trying too hard for that, and, well, so what if she is? She's present and laughing and so totally not his type but he's been chasing the same type since he was twenty-two and he's trying to forget how _that_ worked out.

As it turns out, she's really not a hooker, just an Art Institute dropout from Pike County, and some part of him finds that oddly disappointing. She is, however, free with her kisses, with her affection, and as he slams into her he feels as if he is free himself.

She's also crazy and needy and might very well be using him so she can live out some single motherhood fantasy but even that, he doesn't mind. If he was in the mood to be self-reflective, he might let himself think about the fact that Isabel is everything Alicia is not, is everything she never was. He's not in that mood, though, doesn't allow himself the time to be in that kind of mood. He's never been inclined to make a searching, fearless moral inventory anyway.

When Owen corners him in the elevator, he loses track of the distinction between the truth and the lies, can't figure out if he's being honest or if she sent him to throw Will off his game, to get him to back off. In the end, it doesn't matter. He can't let it matter.

He feels like he's nineteen again, running full steam ahead towards everything, never pausing to consider or equivocate. He has always been at his best when he's under pressure, always put in his strongest performances with a full stadium or a jury watching, with failure nipping at his heels. This is why he gambles, why he drinks, why he takes the kind of risks that make Diane cringe. He wins, though. Most of the time, he wins, and he thinks that it makes him a better lawyer. The pressure is intense, now, and Diane is watching, but he wants more. He wants to break free from the ghosts and get the whole world watching, wants the world to _vindicate_ him.

"I'm suing them," he announces to Diane as they leave Alicia's new office for the first time. "I'm suing _her_."

"No." Diane's voice is unemotional, detached.

"She was a partner. She had a duty of loyalty, which she breached, she had a duty to—"

"To the _firm_," Diane says, cutting him off. "And the _firm_ isn't suing anyone. _She_ is the wife of the next governor. _We_ are overextended trying to serve the clients we still have. _You_ are not using this firm– _my_ firm— "

He slams his fist against the roof of his car and Diane must have been expecting it because she doesn't even flinch.

"Are you done?" she asks, voice calm and even. "Because if you need to kick something else, do it now." _Not back at the firm, not in front of the children._ When he slides in behind the wheel, Diane looks over at him and smiles. "We screw her on her exit package," she says, then.

It's still fun, he thinks, working with Diane.

It's fun working with Damian, too. Will's not entirely sure what he did to get under Alicia's skin, but whatever it was, he _likes_ it.

He tasks Damian and David with drawing up a final exit deal for Alicia. "We're not suing, but she doesn't know that. So use it. Screw her," he instructs. "Screw her hard."

_Diane thinks I'm going too hard on you._ He shakes his head to clear the memory away, to try to forget how much he loved the way they could joke when he was inside of her, the way her mind stayed sharp up until the moment she tumbled over the edge. "She's smart, though," he adds. "Be subtle about it."

Damian nods and David starts talking about some dead client's estate but Will's distracted.

_My place_, he had texted, even as Diane admonished him for how hard he was being. In the elevator of his building, he had pinned her up against the wall and she breathed _I've been thinking about this all day_, against his mouth.

_That'll be on my mind for the rest of the day_, he said a few days before she– _Just the rest of the day?_ she replied, and in the moment it was just flirting, just memory, just whatever stupid, ridiculous _thing_ he used to think was between them but now it seems cold, vicious, — Now he doesn't want to think about what that was, _can't_ think about what it was.

He can't think about what that was just like he can't think about the way she called him later that night, the way she let him believe that maybe she actually wondered what it would be like to have a _life_ with him, to have something more than romance. It doesn't matter now. The ghosts of things past and things that never were don't matter.

He leaves David still talking about the dead client and he doesn't really care. The truth is, he no longer gives much of a damn about what anyone else has to say because words don't mean much, anymore. _Words_ don't mean anything at all.

She always thought words _mattered_, and when they were in school he used to think that was part of what made her so damn _good_.

She used to demand definitions for everything when they outlined, wanted the meaning of words to be placed front and center. Even now, there are some things he can't think about without hearing her voice. _Income is an accession to wealth, clearly realized, over which the taxpayer has complete dominion_, he thinks every April when his accountant calls to get him to sign off on his tax return. _Partners are agents of the partnership, and because the partnership is an association of two or more persons to carry on as co-owners a business for profit, partners are effectively agents of one another._

"We should form a partnership," he joked once during 2L.

"Doing what?" she asked, laughing.

"Practicing law," he said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. He hadn't meant that when he said it, but the idea took hold and he couldn't resist it, couldn't imagine anything better. "Think about it, Leesh, Cavanaugh and Gardner - I'll even let your name come first - we can take over the world together."

"But I have a job," she said, blinking. "Unless I do something stupid this summer to get myself no-offered."

"Yeah, but _think_ about it," he said, the idea getting more attractive by the minute. "You and me, doing this, together, for the rest of our lives… "

"Someday," she said. "When we both have the experience and the clients."

He closes his eyes, tries to shake the memories away. Tries to forget the way he gave her a chance to make that dream a reality and she still walked away without a thought, as if twenty years meant nothing to her. As if _he_ meant nothing to her—

He can't keep doing this. Can't keep living with her fucking ghost.

"We need you in probate court," Diane says, a few days later, and she's pissed, she's so obviously pissed.

"You need me in— ?"

"I told you we'd screw her, I didn't think you'd be stupid enough to let her know we were doing it."

Will blinks, shakes his head to clear the cobwebs. "Alicia?" he asks, and for a brief fraction of a second he wonders how much time he's lost to memory and bourbon and Isabel, thinks Diane means that it's Alicia's will being probated but that doesn't make sense. "I don't— " Then he remembers David, the other day, the client estate and he pushes past the ghosts to try to hear the words he was actually saying. "Ashbaugh?" he tries, and of _course_ it was Ashbaugh, why else would David have brought it up at that moment, of _course_ it's—

_This is the happiest I've ever been._

"She's actually trying to get that thing enforced?" he says. "That's… "

"Unlike her, I know." Diane holds a file out to him. "She had all of us fooled."

She won't look at him in court. She keeps her eyes trained straight ahead and he can't help but wonder if she feels anything about what she's doing, if she even realizes how tacky it is. There was a time, he thinks, when she would have let it go, would have recognized the stupid magic marker will for what it was. There was a time when she would have described a client like her as greedy. She'd have litigated the case anyway, but she wouldn't have _liked_ it. Watching her now, playing plaintiff instead of lawyer, it's galling.

Then again, she sends Clarke Hayden up to question for her, and he knows that technique. Christ, he taught her that technique.

"Have Caitlin run the arbitration, tomorrow," he said against her lips.

"Yeah?" His hand dipped down between her thighs and the word got caught on a hitch in her breath.

"Oh yeah, let her get her feet wet." He murmured, stroking her, and _God, speaking of wet— _

"Mmhmm," she agreed. He thinks she rolled her head back, then, thinks she might have reached for his zipper, but he doesn't really remember. He wanted her to feel good, he remembers. He wanted that more than he wanted any kind of release of his own.

"It's what we do with all the new associates, toss them in on something that doesn't matter, let them argue some low value civil suit. It lets them get the experience when the stakes are low— " He nibbled at her earlobe, fingers settling into a rhythm that never failed to make her squirm, make her moan, make her lose he ability to speak coherently—

"You didn't do that with me," she breathed. She bit her lip and it made him smile, watching her try to split her focus.

"I knew you could handle it," he admitted. "If we just backed off and let you go— "

He can sense her shifting in her seat, feels her eyes on him and he hates the way he is still so attuned to her every movement. A moment later, she springs into action, and Diane's leaning over his shoulder, asking what she has.

"Something from the weekend we were out there with Ashbaugh," he says, a different ghost of a memory picking at the very corner of his mind and he wants it gone, wants _her_ gone. He remembers Ashbaugh, glaring at him, _challenging_ him— _She's mine, buddy,_ he wanted to say. _Look all you want, but she loves _me_, not you, not her rat bastard husband, just me._

Alicia's staring at Lila Ashbaugh, but her back is stick straight, her breathing shallow and slow and _Christ_, the number of times she put on that same show, his fingers working just above the hem of her skirt—

It's so cold, what she's doing, what she's _using_, but then, that's just who she is, isn't it? He doesn't look at her as he asks leave of the Court to question her, waits until Cary and Diane take over and the look on her face makes it all worth it, for a moment. The way she moves from confused to angry to _hurt_–

It feels _good_, seeing her like that, making her fucking _feel something_ because she never really does, does she? She never really did. He was stress relief when she was twenty-three and a rebound or a fuck you to her husband or _something_ when she was forty-three, but he knows now that she never actually _felt_ anything at all. Not for him, anyway.

She never felt anything and he's a damn fool for ever believing that she did, for thinking that stolen kisses and secret looks meant anything at all. Even her tears when she ended things two years ago, even her tears were false, or selfish, or misinterpreted. He used to think she was crying for him, for _them_, for the fact that something good was ending but now— Now he knows better. They were intentional, those tears, and of course they were because Alicia Cavanaugh never cried and Alicia Florrick is far colder than Alicia Cavanaugh ever was. He hates her for those tears, for the way she put them on and used them to make him give her up without a fight, a shortcut instead of a conversation.

"What do you have?" Diane asks him.

"Don't worry about it," he says. "I've got this."

"No," she says, grabbing his arm. "What do you have?"

Will closes his eyes for a moment. "Ashbaugh was in love with her," he says, willing his voice to stay even, willing the ghosts to stay away. "She knew it and used it."

He walks away before he can see Diane's face.

He doesn't finish preparing his direct examination. He doesn't really need to, anyway. He knows what happened, knows what he needs her to say, knows her well enough to get her to say it. He drags Isabel out onto his balcony, strips her down and pulls her roughly onto his lap. His eyes stay open as he fucks her; there's nothing romantic about it.

The thing is, he didn't finish. He didn't finish preparing, so he forgot that Alicia is only weak when she wants to be, when it serves her. She doesn't shy away or play dumb, doesn't back down, and the bitch has the audacity to flirt with him from the stand, all brazen and self-possessed. He might be cruel, but she is _awful_ and he hates her, he hates her, he _hates_ her for making him love her.

Diane doesn't tell him to let her go, doesn't tell him that he's not serving anyone, this way. She doesn't need to. Or maybe she doesn't dare. He's not sure which one it is, but he's grateful, either way.

Alicia tells him, tells him like he's some kid with a schoolyard crush, like _get over the past two decades_ is an item that he can put down on a to do list, in between _pick up more beer_ and _run the dishwasher_. Still, he's getting to her, and she's not nearly as hard to read as she likes to think that she is.

She's not even as hard to read as _he_ used to think she was, and he doesn't know if it's an act or if she's just _tired_. She used to be better at hiding her frustration used to be better at keeping all of her insecurities tucked so far out of sight that he only got to see them in those moments before the sweat dried on her skin when she would whisper secrets into his ear.

"Did I ever tell you about my first trial?" she murmured one night, spooned up against him under the sheets. "When I was still at Crozier, I mean."

He shook his head _no_. "You told me you were going to trial, but Zach was born before you told me how it went and…."

She shifted in his arms, snuggled closer to him. "It was a small case," she said. "Not much money on the line, nothing sexy, but the wife of one of the junior partners was on the PTA with the client, so he took it and farmed it out to me to settle."

"Which made it sexy," Will teased, pressing a kiss against her shoulder.

"I was almost eight months pregnant," she shot back. "There was nothing _sexy_ about me."

"I beg to differ," he said. "I got the Christmas card you guys sent out that year." He closed his eyes, remembered the way Peter's arms had been wrapped around her, both of their hands resting against her belly. He didn't want to think about Peter. "Your tits were— " he squeezed one of her breasts, playful and joking and it felt so _comfortable_, so _right_, so _in the moment_.

"Do you want me to finish my story?" she asked, laughing.

"Please," he said, relaxing his hand but keeping it in place. He could feel her heart beating under his palm.

"Crozier never let first years try cases. We were lucky if we even got to third chair anything, but it was kind of a perfect storm. The defendant was too pissed about being sued to make any kind of reasonable settlement offer, and the partner– Austin Kurtis – Austin got bored by anything that didn't have seven figures on the line, and he thought the jury would be more sympathetic to me because I was just _huge_, so he gave it to me."

"And you killed it," Will surmised. "Because you're— "

"I was awful. I won, but it was awful. I couldn't even get a single question out without half a dozen trivial objections," she said. "I felt like such a failure. And I'd spent… God, I probably billed over a hundred hours in one week, prepping for that trial, and I was _ready_ for it. There was a rhythm to it, in my head, and I wanted to establish a certain pace, keep my first witness talking because he kept going flat if witness prep went on too long— Are you even listening to me?"

He blinked, confused, then realized that his hand wasn't still, that he was instinctively moving against her breast, that her nipple was hard beneath his fingers. "Hanging on every word," he breathed. "Promise." He rolled the nipple between his fingers. "A hundred billable hours. Lots of objections. Your first witness kept going flat if witness prep went on too long."

She jabbed an elbow back into his ribs and he cried out in mock pain. "Anyway, it just _threw_ me," she said. "I don't remember why I'm telling you this."

"Because," he breathed, barely a whisper in her ear. "It still throws you when people do things to break up your narrative."

"It doesn't," she countered. "I still hate it, but I can recover better, now."

"Oh yeah?" He flipped her onto her back, leaned in to tug at her nipple with his teeth, knee pressing between her legs. "This isn't throwing you?"

He can still throw her, can still get under her skin just as easily as he did then. If he's being really honest, he takes almost as much pleasure watching her come apart in the courtroom as he used to take in watching her come apart in the bedroom.

And so he takes her performance apart, piece by piece, leaves her frazzled and frustrated, reduces her to complaining about him instead of arguing her case and even though the judge goes for it, Will thinks that it makes her sound petty and small, like a schoolgirl complaining to the teacher about the boy behind her pulling her pigtails. Still, she is pissed, and that's enough for him.

She's not there after the recess, and he shoots Cary a curious smile. He has to give him a bit of credit, really. Against Will, Alicia is a liability, but not many people would have the balls to tell her as much, to get her out of the courtroom, to stop her from doing any more damage. "Just you, then?" he asks, smile turning into a smirk. "Smart, she's off her game."

Cary shrugs, noncommittal. "You know," he says. "I used to respect you."

Before Will can answer, the judge enters and he stands, gets permission to go ahead, and starts questioning his witness. Alicia breezes in a few minutes into his direct examination, brushes past him without so much as a whispered excuse me. _I'm not so easy to throw,_ he thinks, looking down at her. At first, all he sees is leg. Then he remembers.

"Your hands are shaking," she had whispered, and her smile was so soft, so warm that it made his insides positively _ache_.

"I– "

She brought his fingers to her lips, kissed each one of them. "Hey," she breathed. "I'm the one who should be nervous. I don't exactly look like I'm twenty-three anymore."

He shook his head. "No," he agreed. "You look better. I just... " He didn't tell her that an hour wasn't enough, didn't tell her that he wanted to take his time, to savor her. Didn't tell her anything. He kissed her, then slid down to roll each of her stockings down, to kiss her ankle, her calf, that ticklish spot behind her knee.

"Will, you don't have to-"

"Shhh," he breathed, tugging at her panties. "I want to." He didn't tell her that he missed this, didn't tell her that he still remembered how she tasted.

"Oh, God," she whimpered as he parted her folds, sunk two fingers deep into her and curled them up to find that spot that always made her arch her back, made her whine and whimper and–

"I can't be quiet if you keep doing that," she said, almost teasing, and as he leaned in to taste her he thought, _oh, yes, I remember you._

It was their first time all over again but better, so much better.

He sees her, outside the courtroom, and it's like she's _waiting_ for him. He almost walks away, almost doesn't give her the satisfaction, but he can't help it, can't resist. That's the problem, really. He could never resist.

"I see you decided to change," he says, and he hopes it sounds as mocking to her as he meant it to.

"Yup," she says, barely even looking up from her phone. "Into what I wore the night you banged me the first time."

He wonders how long she's been planning those words, wonders if she practiced them, tried on different barbs until she found the one that she knew would hurt the most. It's low, and he tells her as much, but _low_ doesn't even begin to describe it, doesn't even start to make it okay for her to deny whatever they were back in school, to erase twenty years of his life and reduce whatever they had to some torrid, tawdry affair. She turns lovemaking into fucking, and then she digs the knife even deeper, says she wasn't so discriminating _back then_ and he wonders which _back then_ she really means.

He only wonders for a moment, though. She doesn't mean back in school, when she could have her pick of the student body. No, she means two years ago, when she was choosing between him and her hooker-loving husband. Of course she means Peter; she wants to hurt him. He refuses to be hurt.

It's so transparent, what she's doing, and he finds some satisfaction in that. Finds a lot of satisfaction in it, really, because Alicia is many things, but she's not obvious, not _clumsy_ and for all that she may think she's won this round, he knows better. She's showing her hand, showing her _tells_, has navigated herself right to where he wants her, except—

_Fuck_, he thinks. He still wants her.

**Notes:**

**Duty of Loyalty. **Partners owe a duty of loyalty to the business enterprise. The duty of loyalty requires that partners not divert partnership opportunities or engage in self-dealing. Basically, if you're a member of a partnership, you have a duty to put the interest of the partnership ahead of your own. A partner leaving a firm can't use company resources or confidential information about the company to further her own interests. Things like tipping off the fourth years that their calls and texts were being monitored and copying files from the Lockhart/Gardner servers likely constitute duty of loyalty violations. Additionally, there are ethical rules that apply to all lawyers and, uh, Alicia, Cary, and the rest of the fourth years likely violated several of them. Basically, if Lockhart/Gardner had sued Florrick/Agos - or Alicia personally - they likely would have won a fairly substantial money judgment. If you're really interested in this, the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Committee has a fairly easy-to-understand document discussion the various legal and ethical concerns implicated when an attorney registered in Illinois leaves a law firm. Google "IARDC leaving a law firm" and that publication should come up. (Also, that you can't post links or URLs to ff-dot-net his highly annoying.)

**Gross income**. Section 61(a) of the Internal Revenue Code (26 U.S.C. § 61(a)) provides that, save exceptions laid out in the Code, "gross income means all income from whatever source derived." But that, of course, is question-begging. If we define "gross income" to mean "all income" we still don't know what "income" means. The Supreme Court has defined "income" as existing where the taxpayer has an "undeniable accession[] to wealth, clearly realized, and over which the taxpayer[] [has] complete dominion." _Comm'r v. Glenshaw Glass Co._, 348 U.S. 426, 477 (1955). That definition is still question-begging, however, because we have to define "accession to wealth," "clearly realized," and "complete dominion." That discussion, however, could last for a while and I suspect that I'm pretty much the only person who cares. If anyone's really, really curious about it, however, the Wikibooks page - enDOTwikibooksDOTwiki/US_Income_Tax/Income#The_definition_of_income - on US Income Tax/Income has a section on the definition of income that's relatively good and easy to understand.

**Partnership.**There are several kinds of business organizations, including partnerships, corporations, and limited liability companies (LLCs).Will's description of what a partnership is comes from the Uniform Partnership Act (UPA) § 6(1).


End file.
